There is no magic solution!
Balancing work and life is an ongoing challenge. It’s not something that is miraculously achieved and permanently stays that way. It is about balance; it’s about finding what’s right for YOU. The technology we use needs to be partnered with human interaction. In many instances, we don’t take into account human involvement required to determine how to leverage technology to improve our efficiency. We tend to rely on the technology to do the job for us and then feel frustrated when we struggle to cope, but reality is we just aren’t geared to cope with the volume of data we …
Why don’t we plan more often??
Why is it that we spend more time planning a holiday than planning how we will write a letter or produce a spreadsheet that we, along with others, will rely on for information and decision-making? Many people will create an Excel spreadsheet, enter data and pass it on to someone else. The next person will enter some data in or make changes. Before you know it, mistakes have happened, formulas are incorrect and as a result data is wrong. The common reaction is finger-pointing. But the reality is that in our busy world no one has the time to go …
Distraction is not just a business problem, it’s a life problem!
How we deal with distractions now will set the stage for how we cope when exposed to more distraction. We build resilience to respond to bounce back from events such as lost opportunities, cancellation of an event, but we need to build resilience to technology distractions and over exposure. Technology is designed to create engagement but not necessarily engagement that makes us productive, its often engagement designed to keep our eyeballs on technology! What are you doing to ensure you and your team are not distracted and are focused on your targets and goals?? Subscribe to Donna’s monthly eNewsletter at …
The Power of Connection
Business today has come to rely on technology for so much, but we can’t rely on it for everything. Technology helps streamline and make easier sharing and collaboration of data, but it doesn’t replace the emotional connection of conversation. Beyoncé, Oprah and The Rolling Stones recognise the importance of connection. Whilst technology can distribute their music and message to a global audience, these performers recognise nothing beats the experience of a live concert to create connection. It binds those present. It creates community and a shared experience that is multi-sensory and dimensional. Feeling connected and part of a community via …
Don’t be Scared!
So many of people are afraid…. they are afraid of making mistakes! In business and in life we have long been conditioned not to make mistakes. That making a mistake is bad. But what if we instead of viewing them as mistakes, we viewed them instead as learnings, I know that metaphor has been around for a long time, that’s “there’s no such thing as failure, it’s simply learnings. Thomas Edison when asked about his failed attempts at perfecting the light globes has been said to have answered that he did not fail, that in fact he had merely identified …
Change is Inevitable
We can either go with the flow or swim against the tide. As we start moving back to what will become our new “normal”, you can put your head in the sand hoping things will look like the way they were. The saying is it takes 21 days to create a habit and 21 days to break one. Enforced lock down forced teams to create new habits. Some of them good, some of them bad and some….well time will tell. What happens next matters. As staff return to work, managing engaged and connection, in person virtually or blended is going …
Don’t over complicate things
A client reached out to me wanting to discuss a formula to feed information from one worksheet to another. It should be “easy” (for me) they said, but they had struggled for two years to find an answer before reaching out. Once I understood what they needed, they really didn’t need a complicated formula, in fact they just needed to combine some copying and pasting techniques to cross check data, something most users of Excel could do if they knew the process. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Next time you think a complicated formula is …
What’s next?
I was recently asked where I think technology is going in the future as it relates to productivity. What’s the next BIG thing? For many, the buzz is around AI (artificial intelligence), my thoughts, however, are closer to home. Rather than adding MORE stuff, in my opinion, the greatest gains are to be made in increasing productivity and efficiency with the things we use every day. When we focus on adding more stuff, all we do is add another layer of complexity. With more to learn, interpret and integrate into our already stretched activities and workload. Adding more without strategy …
Reputation and productivity
The choices organisations make to manage their business and human capital in these uncertain times will not only impact on their productivity now but will have an even bigger impact on the future of their business in general. Whilst human nature is to go into protection mode in crisis and seek security, now is not the time for lots of knee-jerk reactions and decisions. The decisions organizations make, and the interpretation of those decisions by staff are going to have far-reaching consequences. The need to be careful, considered and communicate effectively to staff to ensure support and commitment both now, …
We’re not wired to be constantly connected.
I recently read the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport who’s a Computer Science Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Professor Newport is a specialist in computer science. One of the things he said in his book that resonated with me was the fact that as human beings we’re not actually wired to be wired. You’re probably thinking, what does that mean? As human beings, over the last fifteen or so years we’ve started to see technology become more ingrained in our day to day operations whilst technology delivers many benefits to streamline our processes and documentation, it has …
